


Cigarettes and Seaweed Coffee

by Donthavesexwithsam



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Guess who's not ready to face the Mayday Mayhem, This is me pouring my anxiety in a fanfiction, angsty shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 20:04:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6128542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donthavesexwithsam/pseuds/Donthavesexwithsam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Minkowski's trying her hardest to keep herself together after the events during which her Comms Officer disappeared, but when the station turns quiet, she finds it harder and harder to keep calm herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cigarettes and Seaweed Coffee

**Author's Note:**

> I hope to God we get our baby back tomorrow.

It was a bad habit, she was a little ashamed of it too.

Every night, when she returned to her quarters, she would tell herself that this had been the last time. And every night, she would head out again.

When they had locked Hilbert back up in the observation deck, after the nervous thumps of Lovelace pushing herself around the room had quieted down, Minkowski would head out again.

She had always done that, even back on Earth. When she couldn’t sleep, she would wriggle out of her husband’s arms and take the spaniel out for a walk along the riverbank of the Seine. Then, when her mind had calmed down, she would crawl back into his embrace and press her stone cold feet into the insides of his knees.

He hated that.

On the Hephaestus, the frequency of her nightly wanderings had increased dramatically. And after her comms officer had been jettisoned into deep space, they occurred every night.

Hera probably just never brought it up out of politeness, but she must have known. Minkowski didn’t want to think about it.

About two weeks after Doug had… disappeared, she stopped in front of his personal quarters, pressing the door with her fingertips.

It opened, surprising for a door on the Hephaestus, smoothly and without much creaking. Doug never closed it, he didn’t like closed doors. For six-hundred-and-eighty-two days, she had passed that open door on her nightly escapades, hearing his soft snoring.

Now the room was eerily quiet, almost unnaturally. Eiffel seemed to be the only one on the station that wasn’t bothered by all the troubles and pain that kept Minkowski up at night, that woke Lovelace up mid-dream, sweating and screaming.

They all pretended they never heard her. It was all the courtesy they could give her. Don't ask don't tell.

A familiar smell came from Eiffel’s room. Musty, heavy. It smelled faintly of cigarettes and seaweed-coffee. How he managed to get that penetrating ashy stink in his quarters, on a space station, where  _ no smoking was allowed  _ was a mystery to her, but instead of making her want to turn away, it made her breathe in deeper, trying to fetch a whiff of him.

She had entered the room now, closing the door behind her, chasing his ghost. If she closed her eyes, it was almost as if he was still there.

“Eiffel,” She bit back tears, swallowing hard. Nobody replied, not even Hera.

She looked around, from the empty protein wrappings floating in the corner, to the half unstrapped sleeping back on the wall. Minkowski then opened his closet, as if he would be hiding in there. It was possibly a bigger mess than the room room itself, with clothes all balled up and carelessly tossed inside.

And by the looks of it, Eiffel didn’t really believe in sock drawers.

She didn’t know why exactly, but she grabbed one of his sweaters. It dislodged something else too. Memory cards.

Minkowski plugged them into the computer mounted on the wall. She opened the first folder and clicked on the top file, named cjhwho2t92guwoiow.m4a. Eiffel was even too lazy to organize his files.

“ _ This is the log of Comms Officer Eiffel, _ ” Minkowski’s breath halted in her throat. “ _ It’s currently day four-hundred-eighty-seven of our mission around red dwarf star Wolf 359. It feels really weird making these now that I know you guys listen to this back at Canaveral, so I'll just keep making em the old way, truthfully, and then edit out the bits that might make Cutter go all Big Brother on our asses. So yeah, welcome to the unedited version of my daily log, which is obviously the fun version. _ ”

She slowly lifted the sweater towards her face, brushing the soft fabric against her chapped, dry lips, shocked. His sweater smelled of him, musky sweat and cigarettes. In the beginning of the mission he would try to be professional, but after a hundred or so days, he’d just completely given up on it, and from then on, you could always smell him from across the room. Although it wasn’t the most pleasant odor, it had never bothered her too much.

“Eiffel,” She whispered in the sweater.

“ _ Eiffel _ ,” She echoed on the tape. “ _ Does it ever cross your mind that some people would like to abide by military protocol? _ ”

“ _ Seriously Commander? _ ” Eiffel sighed back. “ _ We’re seven-and-a-half light years away from Earth, our command has completely abandoned us and if we would ‘abide by military protocol’, we would have already shot the man in the observation deck. So as long as Hilbert or whatever-his-name-is is still alive, I get to wear my Jurassic Park t-shirt and Doctor Who socks as much as I like. _ ”

“ _ Sure Eiffel, _ ” Minkowski heard herself sigh. “ _ But not for two weeks in a row! _ ”

On the recording, a door slammed.

“ _ Don’t get me wrong listeners, _ ” Eiffel said.  _ “I love her. But sometimes I think we might need to get Hilbert down here to surgically remove the stick from her ass _ .”

Minkowski laughed out loud, a little caught off guard by his words of affection wrapped up in a joke wrapped up in a insult.

And since that night, she would return to his quarters in the middle of the night, to listen to Eiffel’s audio logs, that were mostly Eiffel complaining to Hera. She would listen to them over and over again, until she could murmur them along, hugging that sweater.

And every night again, when she felt empty of pain, when the voice of her Communications Officer had lulled her into the illusion he wasn’t light years from her reach, she would return to her bed and tell herself that tonight,  _ really _ , had been the last time.

And every night, she would head out again. She would bury her face into his scent and drown out her worries with his voice, trying to forget the sword of Damocles hanging over her head.


End file.
